The present invention is concerned in a broad sense with processes of the type described in several United States Patents assigned at issue to UOP, Inc., Des Plaines, Ill. USA wherein a saturated, halogenated (and especially chlorinated) organic feed is processed with a second halogenated organic feed containing significant amounts of unsaturated materials to produce hydrogen halide and an organic product stream having a reduced halogen content. Exemplary of the patents descriptive of these various processes are U.S. Pat. No. 4,899,001 to Kalnes et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,895,995 to James, Jr. et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 4,929,781 to James, Jr. et al.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,818,368 to Kalnes et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,882,037 to Kalnes et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,923,590 to Kalnes et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,927,520 to Kalnes et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,013,424 to James, Jr. et al. are related to the references mentioned in the preceding paragraph but are somewhat differently directed, in describing various processes and arrangements of unit operations for, e.g., "treating a temperature-sensitive hydrocarbonaceous stream containing a non-distillable component to produce a hydrogenated distillable hydrocarbonaceous product while minimizing thermal degradation of the hydrocarbonaceous stream", see col. 1, lines 14-19 of U.S. Pat. No. 4,818,368. A comparison of the contemplated "temperature-sensitive" hydrocarbonaceous streams of these references with the feedstocks, for example, of the U.S. Pat. No. 4,895,995 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,899,001 patents suggests that the arrangements described in these references can be employed for the same or essentially similar applications and uses, depending on whether a stream to be processed also contains non-volatile materials.
Copending, commonly-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/499,695, filed concurrently herewith for "Integrated Process for Handling Saturated and Unsaturated Chlorinated Hydrocarbonaceous Waste and By-Products From Allyl Chloride and Propylene Oxide Processes", also describes processes for the simultaneous processing of saturated and unsaturated chlorinated hydrocarbonaceous materials, to produce an olefin product stream and hydrogen chloride in preferably anhydrous form. An exemplary use is for the processing of a finished 1,2-dichloropropane stream from a chlorohydrin process for manufacturing propylene oxide (as the saturated stream) and of one or more fractions from the fractionatlon of the products of an allyl chloride process, to produce hydrogen chloride and a propylene product stream for recycle to the allyl chloride process or chlorohydrin process for making propylene oxide.
A common feature of each of these various processes is the saturation of the unsaturated chlorinated/halogenated hydrocarbonaceous materials, under mild conditions designed to minimize the tendency of these materials to polymerize or form coke and to thereby cause deactivation of the catalyst in question under hydrogenation conditions. This mild saturation step is followed, directly or indirectly, by a hydrodechlorination step which is conducted under more severe conditions.
Because of the tendency of any unsaturated chlorinated hydrocarbonaceous materials remaining in the effluent from the mild saturation step to polymerize (coke) under the more severe conditions of the subsequent, hydrodechlorination step, however, there is a significant need to essentially completely saturate the unsaturated materials in the unsaturated chlorinated hydrocarbonaceous material-containing feedstock to the mild saturation segment of the process.